Allied forces liberated Paris. Composer-conductor Leonard Bernstein turned 26 and would soon bask in the Broadway success of On the Town. There was, however, another birthday that day (literally, the day of his birth). It was of another great musician whom it was my privilege to know, the guitarist Pat Martino (1944-2021).
It is almost impossible for me to grasp that he would have turned 80 today. In fact, he’s been gone almost three years. To me, he’s still the “guitar god” I met at Folk City on West Third Street in Greenwich Village, when I was 19 and he an old man (in my eyes) of 28. I distinctly remember chatting with him on the northeast corner of West Third and Sixth Avenue (yes, just outside the basketball court informally known as “The Cage”) about how I was picking up the jazz tradition on our common instrument. A few months later, he’d offer to teach me if I’d be willing to travel to his hometown of Philly.
My first initial impression of his playing, like that of many young listeners discovering their favorite musicians, was of his speed of execution. (“Look how fast he plays!) I slowly but surely realized that “fast” does not capture the beauty of his streams of eighth notes. The excitement I so poorly conveyed derived from his melodic inventiveness and “pulse.” He didn’t sound like anyone else, but you knew if someone else was playing his lines Continue reading “80 years ago today”
